Only as Good as Your Last Performance
by Bernard Kariuki
Watching football during the Euros, it was so evident how the world defines us as only as good as our last performance. With that, we have been forced to be on a wheel of performance, with the fear that if the wheel stops, we may become irrelevant, regardless of how good we’ve been. Our previous success is now just a thing of the past. Because we’ve been forced to see each other with a good performance as the way to being accepted, we have put our value in it. It is a shaky ground, because there are so many factors that can affect our performance which are beyond our control, things like age, health, birth of a new-born, and so on.
But what a relief that none of that counts when it comes to God’s love for us, which is not based on performance! We do not have to perform to be accepted by Him, or loved by Him. He doesn’t judge us based on our last performance. We do not earn His love. Our performance could never be enough for His love. There is nothing we could do to ever earn it.
Sometimes we fear that, if we stop performing, God might not be interested in us anymore. We forget that it was not our performance that made Him to send His Son to die for us. It was while we were still sinners, and we didn’t have to do anything for Him to die for us. Despite our mistakes, and our shortcomings, as in the story of the prodigal son, He still longs to see us home with Him. He still wants us.
There is nothing we can do to make Him love us more, and nothing we can do to make Him love us any less. We need to just accept His love, and allow Him to love us as we are. It’s His perfect love which transforms our life, not our performance. He put a valuable thing in our lungs, and that’s His breath. We are simply valuable because we are made in His image. We bear His image, and His breath is in us.
Jesus said that when we look at the sky, we see the birds of the air flying, worry free. They do not perform, yet God looks after them. He said we were to remember we are much more valuable to our heavenly Father than the birds of the air.
Bernard Kariuki is from Kenya, and married to Yulia from Russia. They met in Ellel Ministries and served together for many years at both Ellel Scotland and Ellel Grange. Bernard has the desire to share the Word of God with young people, for he desires to see young people walking in holy fear of the Lord.
Please feel free to use this devotional to send on to your friends or share with your church fellowship. Provided full acknowledgement is made to Seeds of the Kingdom as the source, you are also welcome to use it in a non-commercial way and reproduce it in magazines or other Christian websites. The copyright for any commercial use of the material remains with Ellel Ministries International.
